Is Dr. Arthur Agatston Fearing the Loss of Popularity of South Beach Diet?

Dr. Arthur Agatston, the cardiologist who developed South Beach Diet has stated in a recent interview that the diet is not low-carb, as everybody labels it.

Speculating the wave of decrease in popularity of the low-carb diets, many hastened to say that Dr. Agatston's recent statement is issued from his fear that the diet would fail altogether taken by this wave. The way I see it, the allegation was made not necessarily as a defense against the popularity fall, but as a reaction against frequent associations with low-carb diets, especially with Atkins diet, with which it shares slight resemblance but of which it fundamentally differs.

What is it that the two diets share? The common points of the diets lie in the carbohydrate restriction during the incipient phases, with the induction of ketosis. But, speaking of the following phases in the diet, unlike the unhealthy recommendations of strict reduction of carbohydrates and foods high in saturated fats that Atkins makes, the South Beach diet recommends replacement of all simple carbohydrates with complex, healthy ones. In fact, South Beach diet recommends consumption of lots of whole grains, brown rice and fruit. Also, it strongly advises against all saturated fat, recommending instead unsaturated fats consumption, stressing on the healthy properties of the olive oil and fish oil.

So, is Dr. Agatston's claim that the South Beach diet is not a low-carb diet a response to the fading of the low-carb craze? In fact, with the allegation that "We are not low carb. We are good carb", Dr. Agatston reestated part of what he declared in his book "South Beach Diet", that the diet was neither low-carb nor low-fat. So, how Dr. Agatston could have known in 2003, when the book was published, of the dramatic drop in percentage of low-carb dieters - from 9% in January 2004 to 4.6% in September 2004?